Identity authentification systems are known. In their simplest form an identity authentification system may be comprised of a name-tag type identity badge and a security guard with the security guard denying access to a resource to any who cannot verify their identify through production of an identity badge.
A disadvantage of name-tag type identity badges is their transferability. An identity badge is typically effective in inverse proportions to the number of people carrying such badges.
An improvement on the concept of the identity badge is the inclusion of a picture of an authorized user within the identity badge (picture ID). The picture ID also suffers from shortcomings. The picture ID may be altered for use by someone other than the original authorized user. Another shortcoming may lie in the quality of the picture in that a number of people may have the same general physical characteristics and may easily pass for the authorized user.
In addition to authentification of a person within a facility, i.e. ID badge checking, identity authentification is commonly a requirement for operation of certain types of equipment or equipment systems. In such cases the user may type or speak a password, or insert a specialized key. Examples may include equipment as diverse as from computers to automobiles.
Recent improvements to identity authentification systems include fingerprint analyzers and retina scanners. Each of these technologies, though effective, still present some difficulty in implementation. Among the disadvantages include the technical difficulty in administering such tests and the expense of maintaining secure data bases.
In general, whenever authentification and verification of identity is required with a non-transferable attribute, an identifying device is employed. When the device must have the attribute of being non-transferable, a bio-metric (such as a photo, or fingerprint, or retina print) may be added to the device. Where the device must have the attribute of being non-forgible, the bio-metric may be encrypted.
Authentification and verification systems may serve a variety of applications. A personnel badge may be just one of the applications. Other applications include identification of automobiles, railroad box-cars, trucks, boats, airplanes, and almost any other kind of vehicle. Examples of such applications include locating stolen cars or automatically debiting a vehicle owner at a highway toll booth.
Encryption systems are also known. Encryption systems, in the past, have been applied to make information unintelligible to unauthorized parties. Encryption systems, more recently, are typically used in RF communication systems to prevent unauthorized monitoring of an information signal.
Encryption techniques typically involve generating an information signal and applying the signal to an encryptor which encrypts the information signal to produce a random or pseudo random signal that preferably resembles a noise signal.
Random or pseudo random signals may be generated by a suitable algorithm or through the use of a non-symmetric Public Key algorithm. A non-symmetric Public Key algorithm uses a encode key that is different from the decode key. The use of a non-symmetric Public Key algorithm assures that an attacker who knows the decode key (perhaps by accessing a decoding unit) may not be able compute the encode key in a reasonable time. Without the encode key an unauthorized user cannot transmit an encrypted signal within a given secure system (for a description of Public Key systems see "Cipher Systems" by Henry Beker and Fred Piper, John Wiley & Sons--Constable, 1982).
Because of the importance of identity authentification systems a need exists for a way to embed physical or biometric parameters of an authorized possessor under a suitable encryption technique into identity authentification devices that cannot be altered, or decoded, except by authorized parties.
As authentification devices become more sophisticated (because of encryption requirements or otherwise) memory requirements for storing data have increased. In part, because of increased memory volume, the problem of efficiently retrieving data from authentification memory devices has become more difficult. Credit cards were originally imprinted with numbers, which had to be typed into authentification terminals until the advent of magnetic coding. Reading the magnetic code, on the other hand, required physically passing the credit card through a reader. In many applications where authentification and identification involves large numbers of people or equipment it is desirable to automatically retrieve stored data relative to identify without a requirement for a specific physical act such as insertion of a ID card or the like.
A need exists for an apparatus to retrieve stored data based upon a proximal relationship of the identification device to a detection (verification) device. Such an apparatus would be useful in applications of high volume processing and also in systems involving encrypted signals where bio-metric or physical data may be encoded so as to appear as a random signal.